Sam Rockwell on Ben Mendelsohn in ‘Animal Kingdom’

Actors on actors

“He’s effective and dangerous without really having to raise his voice very much. It’s a very complex and emotionally deep role. He plays someone who is out of control and you see a very authentic struggle, a specific psychosis, a bipolar maybe manic-depressive thing. I’m not sure what Ben Mendelsohn did for his research, but you can tell when an actor is being very specific about a character, like Glenn Close in ‘Fatal Attraction.’ You can tell she didn’t just slap that together.

That’s what made Ben special to me. You have seen that archetype done a lot, you’ve seen that character a million times and he just did it in a very different way. A brilliant performance.”